The Other London • 43avoid the onerous duties). The new churchwardens and overseers of the poor
revised the previous year’s budget for poor relief, assessing all taxable house-
holds according to their means. Collectors for the poor would gather the
money periodically, and the churchwardens would disburse it to those in
need. The two churchwardens (senior and junior) and two to four overseers
of the poor kept close watch on their pounds, shillings, and pence, recording
every sum and its use.
The heavy-bound ledgers listing the shillings and pence doled out weekly
to widows, orphans, and indigent old men offer rare glimpses of the hard-
luck lives of this other London. The chronically indigent were kept alive, and
the churchwardens, though burdened with their own business and volunteer
activities, prioritized unexpected cases of need. A chance fire (a common oc-
currence) destroyed the lifetime possessions of a family; an accident at work
maimed a healthy man for life; one of the illnesses that were endemic in
working quarters struck down the breadwinner in the family. Even when the
winter was kind, springtime employment plentiful, and the summer harvest
bountiful, unexpected expenses sometimes put the churchwardens’ account
in the red; they were to make up the difference with their own money until
the next assessment. The Elizabethan Poor Law, now three generations old,
was not a perfect instrument of caregiving, even in Symon Patrick’s affluent
parish.^6
Covent Garden, with a median of 7. 7 hearths per household (the highest
in Greater London), was the victim of its own privilege.^7 Pregnant girls,
down on their luck, came trudging in to give birth at the parish’s expense.
Vagrants were found lying dead on the streets at dawn; no relative offered to
pay for their burial. Unwashed beggars stumbled upon the Piazza and paused
at the doorstep of one of its illustrious householders. Perhaps that generous
noblewoman, Lady Abergavenny, or Lord Brouncker, who had designed
King Charles’s yacht, would take pity on their plight. But maybe not; most
well-to-do residents were content to pay their poor tax and let the church-
wardens decide who merited poor relief.
From Easter 1664 to Easter 1665 , the parish’s 485 ratepayers had funded re-
lief for 50 pensioners, orphans, and homeless children, along with an equal
number of emergency cases. An outsider, including a woman about to give
birth, was quickly hustled back to her home parish (if it could be deter-
mined), which was expected to bear the burden of support as the law re-
quired. It was odd to see an elegant coach taking a poor person along the
Strand to the countryside, but the churchwardens of Covent Garden felt
they had to limit poor-relief expenditures to the needy of the parish.